1980: Home video game popularity grows as action, strategy games get better. 
1980: The Minitel telephone system begins in France; it will run for decades. 
1980: The PC hard drive, holds 10 MB. 
1980: 1% of homes have VCRs. 
1980: Berzerk introduces arcade video games that speak.x 
1980: A 25 lb. portable computer is favorite of reporters who send news from field. 
1980: Pac-Man. 
1980: In France, a holographic film shows a gull flying. 
1980: A former movie star, Ronald Reagan, is elected president of the United States. 
1980: Intelsat V relays 12,000 phone calls, 2 color TV channels. 
1980: Public international electronic fax service, Intelpost, begins. 
1980: Atlanta gets first fiber optics system. 
1980: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones put news database online. 
1980: In Germany, the Telekom videotex system begins tests. 
1980: CNN, 24-hour news channel, begins reports. 
1980: The TRS-80 portable computer is favorite of reporters who send news from field. 
1980: Sony introduces the consumer camcorder. 
1980: Voyager 1 sends back images of Saturn and its moons, one billion miles away. 
1980: From 3M, Post-it notes. 
1980: FCC gives private companies go-ahead to build, launch communication satellites. 
1980: International committee (CCITT) sets compatibility standards for fax machines. 
1980: Oscars: Ordinary People, Robert De Niro, Sissy Spacek. 
1980: Also at the movies: Raging Bull, Coal Miner's Daughter, Private Benjamin. 
1980: Foreign language film Oscar: Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, U.S.S.R. 
1980: Nobel Prize in Literature: Polish-American poet Czeslaw Milosz. 
1980: The public sees a computer digital imaging system. 
1980: Lasers are used to set type.

1981: On Broadway, Cats. 
1981: The laptop computer is introduced by Tandy. 
1981: MTV, a music video channel, goes on cable 24/7. 
1981: The IBM PC. 
1981: Nobel Prize in Literature: British immigrant Elias Canetti. 
1981: 450,000 transistors fit on a silicon chip 1/4-inch square. 
1981: Hologram technology improves, now in video games. 
1981: Donkey Kong, from Nintendo. 
1981: Centipede, first arcade video game designed by a woman, Dona Bailey. 
1981: In France the Minitel system, an national online information hookup. 
1981: From Microsoft, the MSDOS 1.0 operating system. 
1981: The laptop computer is introduced. 
1981: Most modems run at 300 bits/sec. 
1981: Oscars: Chariots of Fire, Henry Fonda, Katherine Hepburn. 
1981: At the movies: On Golden Pond, Reds, Raiders of the Lost Ark (Indiana Jones #1). 
1981: The mouse pointer is attached to computers. 
1981: Prestel videotex adds email service. 
1981: The Donkey Kong computer game flies off the shelves. 
1981: Some stores in Canada provide touchscreens for shoppers. 

1982: Pac-Man attracts girls as well as boys to home video games. 
1982: From Japan, a camera with electronic picture storage, no film. 
1982: Tron from Disney is both feature film and arcade video game. 
1982: Sony of Japan and Philips of the Netherlands bring out the compact disc. 
1982: Caller ID. 
1982: The one-button point-and-click mouse is born. 
1982: Oscars: Gandhi, Ben Kingsley, Meryl Streep. 
1982: Also at the movies: E.T., Tootsie, The Verdict, Missing, Das Boot. 
1982: Foreign language film Oscar: Volver a Empezar (To Begin Again), Spain. 
1982: Return of the Jedi opens in theaters equipped for its THX sound system. 
1982: Kodak camera uses film on a disc cassette. 
1982: Commodore 64 introduced; popular with game players. 
1982: Ian Hancock's Land of Pain tells little known, tortured history of the gypsies. 
1982: Vectrex video game computer is introduced. 
1982: Nobel Prize in Literature: novelist Gabriel Garc’a Márquez, Colombia. 
1982: Michael Jackson's album Thriller sells 25 million copies. 
1982: 5.5 million PCs have been sold. 
1982: Alice Walker's novel, The Color Purple. 
1982: Thomas Keneally's novel, Schindler's List starts as "Schindler's Ark." 
1982: Prestel videotex system adds Newsweek content for subscribers. 
1982: U.S. Post Office begins installing optical scanners nationwide.

1983: Nobel Prize in Literature: British novelist William Golding. 
1983: Compaq builds the first fully compatible IBM clone. 
1983: Time names the computer as "Man" of the Year for 1982. 
1983: Joseph Heller, God Knows, comic novel about King David. 
1983: CDs go on sale. 
1983: Radio Caroline resumes broadcasting from the Ross Revenge in the North Sea 
1983: Intercity fiber optic phone transmission begins: New York to Washington. 
1983: Lasers and plastics improve newspaper production. 
1983: Audio music cassettes outsell LP records. 
1983: Laser disc technology used in Dragon's Lair, an arcade video game. 
1983: Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program. 
1983: Vanessa Williams, who is black, wins long-time segregated Miss America contest. 
1983: Japan's NHK presents its analog HDTV system at Swiss conference. 
1983: Computer chip holds 288,000 bits of memory. 
1983: ZIP + 4, expanded 9-digit ZIP codes, and postal bar codes are introduced. 
1983: Internet domains get names instead of hard-to-remember numbers. 
1983: Oscars: Terms of Endearment, Robert Duvall, Shirley MacLaine. 
1983: Also at the movies: The Right Stuff, Silkwood, The Big Chill, Flashdance. 
1983: TCP/IP becomes standard for Internet communication between computers. 
1983: MILNET, for military sites, splits off ARPANET. 
1983: American videotext service starts; fails in three years. 
1983: In Chicago, Motorola starts testing cellphone service.

1984: Machine translates basic Japanese into basic English, but with mistakes. 
1984: Portable compact disc player arrives. 
1984: National Geographic puts a hologram on its cover. 
1984: From Florida, Radio Marti beams anti-Castro propaganda to Cuba. 
1984: William Gibson coins the term "cyberspace" in his novel Neuromancer. 
1984: A television set can be worn on the wrist. 
1984: Japanese introduce high quality facsmile over phone lines. 
1984: Several large U.S. newspapers offer online text versions. 
1984: Apple Macintosh and IBM PC AT are introduced. 
1984: Canon sells an electronic still camera. 
1984: 3 1/2-inch disk drive. 
1984: AT&T fiber optic cable service extends from Boston to Washington. 
1984: The 32-bit microprocessor. 
1984: CD-ROM disk can hold 270,000 typewritten pages of data. 
1984: Broadway Pulitzer musical, Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George. 
1984: Oscars: Amadeus, F. Murray Abraham, Sally Field. 
1984: Also at the movies: Places in the Heart, The Killing Fields, The Natural. 
1984: Foreign language film Oscar: Dangerous Moves, Switzerland. 
1984: The one-megabyte memory chip. 
1984: Nobel Prize in Literature: Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert. 
1984: Multiple award novelist John Updike, The Witches of Eastwick. 
1984: Playwright Sam Shepard, Fool for Love. 
1984: Novelist Tom Clancy, The Hunt For Red October and Red Storm Rising.

1985: Worldwide mass communication harnessed for "Aid to Africa" appeal. 
1985: Desktop publishing becomes familiar. 
1985: Nintendo enters home video game market. 
1985: Cray-2 supercomputer does 1.2 billion calculations per second. 
1985: Historian Daniel Boorstin , The Discoverers. 
1985: Western novelist Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove. 
1985: In Soviet Union, mass communication opens up under "glasnost" policy. 
1985: Nobel Prize in Literature: French novelist Claude Simon. 
1985: Hollywood amends ratings; now G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17, X. 
1985: Household ownership of VCRs rises rapidly to 20%. 
1985: Cellphones go into cars. 
1985: Images can be broken into digital bits. 
1985: Microsoft ships the Windows 1.0 operating system. 
1985: Synthetic text-to-speech computer pronounces 20,000 words. 
1985: Television broadcasts can be heard in stereo. 
1985: U.S. TV networks begin satellite distribution to affiliates. 
1985: Typical modem speed now 2400 bits/second. 
1985: At Expo, a Sony TV screen measures 40x25 meters. 
1985: Sony builds a radio the size of a credit card. 
1985: America Online founded as Quantum Computer Services. 
1985: Publication of last of Ana•s Nin's diaries. 
1985: In Japan, 3-D television; no spectacles needed. 
1985: Oscars: Out of Africa, William Hurt, Geraldine Page. 
1985: Also at the movies: Witness, The Color Purple, Prizzi's Honor, Ran, Rambo. 
1985: Foreign language film Oscar: The Official Story, Argentina. 
1985: The 12-hour holocaust documentary, Shoah. 
1985: Kids can't get enough of Super Mario Brothers computer game. 
1985: New videotape formats: 8 mm and VHS-C. 

1986: Digital Audio Tape (DAT). 
1986: Congress passes Electronic Communications Privacy Act. 
1986: Computer-created Luxo, Jr. is first of Pixar's virtual studio films. 
1986: U.S., Europe veto Japanese analog HDTV; will develop digital system. 
1986: Nigerian poet-dramatist Wole Soyinka wins Nobel Prize in literature. 
1986: Comic books turn grim and violent with The Dark Knight Returns. 
1986: Oscars: Platoon, Paul Newman, Marlee Matlin. 
1986: Maus comic books, about the Holocaust, published; will win Pulitzer. 
1986: Also at the movies: The Color of Money, Children of a Lesser God, Aliens. 
1986: Foreign language film Oscar: The Assault, Netherlands. 
1986: A fourth U.S. television network, Fox, is added to ABC, CBS, NBC lineup. 
1986: Laser printers start to replace dot matrix and daisy wheel printers. 
1986: The LISTSERV mailing list program. 
1986: International standards set for audio, video, digital recording. 
1986: On Broadway, the musical, Phantom of the Opera. 
1986: Patriot Games, another by Tom Clancy, author of best-selling military novels. 
1986: Television is on for more than seven hours a day in average U.S. home. 
1986: Japanese introduce Game Boy, with 8-bit operating system. 
1986: An encyclopedia, the American, is put on CD-ROM. 
1986: Cable shopping networks meet two public desires: TV and shopping. 
1986: Voyager 2 sends back images of Uranus.

1987: Tom Wolfe's first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities; will be panned film. 
1987: Nobel Prize in Literature: Russian exile poet Joseph Brodsky. 
1987: Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL). 
1987: The Simpsons, animated cartoon, introduced on Fox TV. 
1987: Global teleconference on hunger links 50,000 people in 79 cities. 
1987: Toni Morrison's Pulitzer novel, Beloved. 
1987: From Japan, the" anime" cartoon film. 
1987: Oscars: The Last Emperor, Michael Douglas, Cher. 
1987: Also at the movies: Wall Street, Moonstruck, Fatal Attraction, Lethal Weapon. 
1987: Government deregulates cable industry. 
1987: IBM offers a computer with VGA, giving a choice of 262,144 colors. 
1987: Excel, PageMaker are born. 
1987: Bill Atkinson's hypercard brings Vannevar Bush's hyperlink vision to reality. 
1987: Dolby Pro Logic speakers are made for the home market. 
1987: National Science Foundation starts NSFNET; it will replace ARPANET. 

1988: The Digital Disc Playback (DDP) system uses uncompressed digital sound. 
1988: Sony introduces the Pocket Discman. 
1988: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? feature film combines live action, animation. 
1988: Stephen Hawking's explanation of the Universe, A Brief History of Time. 
1988: First transatlantic telephone call over fiber optics line. 
1988: Government brochure mailed to 107 million addresses. 
1988: Prodigy dial-up service. 
1988: The first Nobel Prize in literature written in Arabic won by Naguib Mahfouz. 
1988: Oscars: Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman, Jodie Foster. 
1988: Also at the movies: Die Hard, Big, Do the Right Thing, A Fish Called Wanda. 
1988: Tenn. Sen. Albert Gore proposes U.S. research and education network. 
1988: Self-service fax machine can be accessed by credit card. 
1988: "Hacker" and "Worm" enter the Internet lexicon. First data crime reported. 
1988: The TV show Roseanne breaks ground with a plain-talking blue collar family. 
1988: Steve Jobs offers the futuristic NeXT computer. 
1988: Jarkko Oikarinen of Finland writes the Internet Relay Chat software program. 
1988: Internet T1 backbone completed; soon proves inadequate for traffic surge. 
1988: James Michener, Alaska, another blockbuster from ancient times to the present. 
1988: In Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco offers a novel with levels of meaning. 
1988: CDs now outsell vinyl records. 
1988: Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, enrages Muslims. 
1988: 98% of U.S. homes have at least one television set.

1989: Ayatollah Khomenei orders death for Salman Rushdie, who is not in Iran. 
1989: AT&T claims speech recognition machine understands 300 billion sentences. 
1989: Amy Tan's best-selling novel of Chinese women, The Joy Luck Club. 
1989: Researchers try to index the exploding Internet; can't keep up. 
1989: Another Tom Clancy military best-selling novel, Clear and Present Danger. 
1989: TV Guide cover puts Oprah Winfrey's head on Ann-Margaret's body. 
1989: Caribbean.is examined across time in typical James Michener style. 
1989: With 5 million Minitels, France is the world's most wired nation. 
1989: New Sony videotape format: Hi8. 
1989: Photos can be digitally manipulated on a home computer. 
1989: Nintendo racks up an annual profit of $1 billion. 
1989: Nobel Prize in Literature: novelist Camilo José Cela, Spain. 
1989: E.L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate, fact and fiction among Thirties gangsters. 
1989: New Revised Standard Version of the Bible replaces Revised Standard Version. 
1989: Oscars: Driving Miss Daisy, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jessica Tandy. 
1989: Also at the movies: When Harry Met Sally, Glory, Field of Dreams. 
1989: Foreign language film Oscar: Cinema Paradiso, Italy. 
1989: Voyager 2 sends back images of Neptune. 
1989: Pacific Link fiber optic cable opens, can carry 40,000 phone calls. 
1989: B.F Skinner, The Origins of Cognitive Thought, delves into behaviourist theory. 
1989: Holidaymakers can buy single use, throwaway cameras.